Chapter XXI · (continued 2)

The love of humanity begat our Neros, our Torquemadas, our Ivans the Terrible, and Schdanows!

Why did these men torture other men?... In order themselves to realize in imagination the others’ torments, to sympathize with them, to feel with them. In order in their own spirit to endure these martyrdoms; that is to say, to torture themselves with the representation of the pain of another.... “Thus in its motives sadism is nothing else than masochism.”

The love of humanity erected the cross of Christ, lighted the faggots with which Huss and Bruno wore burned, tortured Thomas Münzer, stabbed Marat, decapitated Hebert, and built the gallows of Arad, St. Petersburg, Chicago, etc.!

The love of humanity built the Bastille, the Tower of London, the Spielberg, Blackwell’s Island, and the Schlüsselburg, built the torture-chambers of the Inquisition, constructed the medieval penal system, and those of Montjuich, Alcalla del Valle, Borissoglebsk, and many others.

Remarkable! That precisely your “love of humanity” was the most cruel tormentor, the most inexorable executioner, the most bloodthirsty butcher of men, and the greatest of all criminals.

Do you not see in all this the wise rule of the masochistic principle? That it was only persecution which diffused these ideas? All the progress which man makes in civilization must be paid for by means of enormous sacrifice. The superhuman sorrows of millions of slaves created the civilization of antiquity—the Phœnician, the Babylonian, the Persian, the Assyrian, the Greek, and the Roman! (With regard to this often disputed fact, see Mommsen: “In comparison with the sufferings of the slaves of antiquity, all the sufferings of modern negro slaves are simply a drop in the ocean!”)

Indian civilization is the product of the most horrible suppression and plunder of the lower castes by the higher. The soil of the Southern States of America was cultivated through being manured with the sweat, blood, and bones of negro slaves.

The soil of Europe, again, was made fertile by the sufferings of slaves and serfs, and so on!

Amid the most horrible birth-pangs, amid the slave rebellions, peasant wars, and revolutions, in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, mankind was enabled to throw off the shell of the feudal system. Therewith capitalism was born. This newest form of civilization, once more, is based upon horrible plundering, oppression, and misery of millions and millions of proletarians.

What a devastation of humanity results from the acquirements of civilization in respect of engineering and the practical arts!... Every invention and discovery demands its victims!...

How often have chemists been destroyed by an explosion in the creation of new compounds, or killed by the development of poisonous vapours!

Count the engineers who have been sacrificed to their profession, or bacteriologists who have been killed through infection in the study of zymotic diseases!

Count all the victims of professional diseases, of tuberculosis, phosphorus necrosis, lead poisoning, mercurial poisoning, etc.!... Count all those who have fallen from scaffoldings, all the sailors who have been drowned, all the railway employees who have been run over, all the factory hands who have been torn to pieces by machinery, all those who have been destroyed in mines by explosions, etc.!

Think of the hunger and misery of the widows and children of these victims of industry and science, of the loss of work and other social injuries resulting from capitalism!

The rebellion of the victims of this system, again, gives rise to the class war, with new tortures, new sufferings!... In order ultimately, by the creation of a new social system in the future, to free mankind from these sufferings!... People believe it! But that is nonsense! The sufferings will only assume a new form, and will increase!!

Do you, then, believe that all the miseries of mankind at the present time have been the result only of chance, not of foresight?

Oh, no! These sufferings were only the stimulus which drove mankind forward to new construction, to greater progress, in order to avoid suffering!... Progress brought new suffering, and so on.

“Thus suffering is the civilizing factor of mankind! To free mankind from suffering would mean to rob mankind of civilization.”

Can we represent to ourselves a life of complete satisfaction?

No! Without suffering, the needs would be wanting which alone provide the stimulus to progress!... Without suffering, we should also be without enjoyment. For everything reaches our consciousness only by means of its opposite.

“To free us from torment means to rob us of pleasure.... But then we should no longer have any interest in life!”

“Civilization is a union, a hermaphrodite structure, of pleasure and pain—that is, masochism!!... The progress of mankind is only possible by means of the masochistic principle.”

Oh, cruel-sweet philosophy of Golgotha!! Eternally shalt thou remain the Moira and Kismet of humanity!!!

VII.

“Always the more, always the better of your kind shall perish, for it shall always be worse for you. So only—so only—does man grow upwards” (Nietzsche, “Zarathustra,” ii., p. 126).

Magnificent Nietzsche!

Now first do I grasp your “superman”!... Now I share your hatred of the every day and the average!

Away with the philistine cowardice which says, “Above all, do not go too far!... Do everything with moderation and for a definite end!... Never go too far, and never fall into extremes!”...

No!... Go forward with courage into the extreme!... Only slothfulness, comfortableness, and cowardice are afraid of a Turkish bath, with the subsequent cold douche!

But how the body softens under this laisser faire et laisser passer, how it loses its power of resistance, accumulates substances which are superfluous, and therefore harmful! In the same way that part of humanity which follows this device will perish from the philistine disease named “moderation”!

Let mankind get into its Turkish bath—and then get under the cold douche! Thus it will be steeled, rejuvenated, and invigorated! Thus it will be freed from superfluous matters!

“Let things be made continually worse and harder for mankind, then the reaction will step in and drive them forward!”

According to this device I acted henceforward. To increase pain, in order that pleasure might become greater!

An immeasurable love for humanity took possession of me now that I had at length attained the point of view which so perfectly harmonized with my individuality.... I myself became equivalent to humanity; I felt the heart-beat of millions in myself. Their contradictory feelings were united in my own person. I felt equally capitalist and proletarian; equally orthodox Christian and Catholic, Jew and atheist; equally man and woman.

All the sorrows and joys in humanity I felt in myself, and I plunged myself in them to the depths.

I wished to experience them all in my own spirit.... I studied universal history, but with what perception!... I did not confine myself to facts, but I turned to the persons of those who were acting; I represented to myself all the misery of the crowd and the thought of the crowd.

What intolerable pain all these provided for me! How I began to love glorious humanity which suffered all that!

Now the moment had come! Now was the time quickly to plunge into the extreme of life!... To plunge into all the sorrows of the millions, and to increase them tenfold, a hundredfold, a thousandfold! To drink the voluptuous sensation which all experience in the paroxysm of frenzy, and thus to become thoroughly man!!

VIII.

From now onwards I threw myself with enthusiasm into the arms of the most extreme section of the anarchist movement. I gave up the whole of my property to the support of newspapers, to the publication of pamphlets, to the support of agitators, and so on. But, at the same time, I remained in touch with the “upper ten thousand.” I travelled through the principal countries of Europe and America, everywhere forming associations, everywhere developing amid the receptive element of the movement my most radical tendencies—in most cases with good result.

(He now describes in detail his propagandist destructive activity, especially in Spain.)

IX.

Meanwhile, in my home in Eastern Europe the revolutionary tendency was continually gaining force; anarchism also became more influential. I felt that there was the proper field for my further activity.

Henceforward I lived partly in Paris and partly in Genf and Zürich, in order from these places to guide the movement in my direction.

Among my own countrymen I soon found adherents to whom nothing seemed too fantastic, nothing too radical.

Soon we were in possession of a small printing-office, with the aid of which we issued leaflets, pamphlets, and newspapers.

These generally contained the same ideas: the working classes should not bother themselves with political demands, such as “universal suffrage,” “individual liberty,” and the like. For, even if all these were to be gained, social oppression and exploitation would remain unaltered: these are what they feel most deeply, and from these evils all the others result. The working classes should rather aim at the “social revolution,” they should undertake the “expropriation of the expropriators.”

In the newspapers and pamphlets we proved in a scientific manner the justice of all forms of individual expropriation—robbery with violence, theft, extortion, etc.; we conducted an attack on property; we demanded the destruction of wealth, whether in private hands or in the hands of the State, in order that its possession might be more easily gained.

When the war between Japan and Russia broke out, we all felt that the time for increased activity had now arrived—most of us moved to Poland, Lithuania, or Bessarabia. A few only remained in Switzerland, in order to keep a grip upon the organization in these parts.

X.

For me there now began a period of frightful sufferings.... With frenzied haste, I seized all the possible news from the seat of war; greedily I consulted the reports of great battles lasting for entire weeks; I read of the dreadful storming of Port Arthur. All the horrible details passed plainly before my eyes.

All the frightful tortures of the masses I represented in my imagination. I saw how they stood in battle day after day; how they had lost consciousness in consequence of hunger and thirst and fatigue, and so went on fighting as mere automata. Ultimately they even forgot to take nourishment, to drink, and to rest—they actually did not any longer understand that they could free themselves from their torture of hunger and thirst, could save their lives, by eating and drinking—so they went on in a frenzy until they fell.

I was no longer capable of doing anything else than, with a swimming head, with temples pulsating with fever, studying war reports. Day and night these pictures were before me. Oh, if I could only stand with them in this hell!... How I loved them, these people who were capable of such grand actions!... I wished to call out to them: “Be embraced, O millions! Receive the kiss of the whole world!”... Yes, these are the true civilized nations!... To what progress must these horrible sufferings give rise? What a future for mankind! What joys to come!

XI.

Meanwhile the whole of my property had been used up in the revolutionary movement. The little money that was still available, that we were still able to scrape together here and there, was necessarily used for party purposes. I therefore suffered the most horrible poverty—now in Warsaw, now in Lodz, Bialystok, Kiew, or Odessa. ... Most of our adherents were among the poor Jewish quarters of these towns.

My earnings consisted of occasional work and occasional theft. When there was nothing doing in either of these ways, I moved on with a few of my own kind from one of our supporters to another.... These people divided with us the little they had.

It was a voluptuous joy to me, finally, to plunge into the uttermost depths of misery which it is possible to reach.

It was an enormous victory to be able to live in such surroundings. What glorious torments I suffered, until I had overcome the disgust and loathing which the whole environment produced in me! Everywhere we were amidst horrible dirt.

Notwithstanding all the dirt and misery in which I saw these people wallowing—or, precisely, because of these things—I began to love them as hitherto I had loved no others.... When they told me of the frightful persecutions which their people had endured as no other had done, then I experienced an unnamable yearning to be one of them; then I wondered at the enormous power with which, notwithstanding all persecutions, amidst the most frightful misery which I saw around me, yet they were able to be the most ardent revolutionists.

XII.

Everywhere now the revolution was in flood. We developed a feverish activity in all our centres.... At first we had no very great influence, but our emissaries were actively at work everywhere, in order to convert our movement from a political one to a social one, or at least to an economic one.

For this purpose we had provided a secret printing-press in Warsaw, where we prepared the necessary leaflets. They were written by a student, who was a genius in this speciality. No one understood as well as he how to appeal to the instincts of the crowd. The moving power of his style was incomparable.... He put the facts side by side, illuminated them from the side that seemed to him most suitable, and then drew his conclusions, which, in their simple convincing logic, seemed irresistible. Then he turned to inflame fanaticism, reminded us how, then and there, and there, and there, so many victims had been sacrificed to the same idea; how, there and elsewhere, on the barricades men had died for it, and had rather rotted in prison than abandon their just demands. In this way he always succeeded in moving the crowd.

It was very efficacious, also, to remind the people of all the little tricks which had been played upon them by the manufacturers and by the authorities; he drew their attention to the fact how they, who had created everything, were actually not recognized as human beings, far less as human beings with equal rights.... These proofs most readily infuriated the proletarians to frenzy, and in some places, as in Lagonsk, Tiflis, and Baku, we succeeded in turning the movement in the economic direction. It was a great advantage that we had associates everywhere, and we were quickly notified when the rain was likely to begin, so that we could speedily move to another place.

In Tiflis the affair did not go as I wished; here the people were only too practical.... They began neither to strike, nor to demolish, nor to attack the soldiers.... No.... They simply said: “So much wages do we want; then we shall work only for such a time; and no commodity must rise in price.... Every one who will not take part with us we shall shoot.”... All the inhabitants joined them.... After a short time all this came to nothing.

Baku was more pleasing to me.... Here the petroleum-borers made their demands, and as these were not agreed to within two days, they set fire to 140 wells.... Then, to my great regret, the proprietors agreed to everything which had been demanded. I had been so inhumanly glad to see my life-ideal fulfilled. It seemed as if the situation was going to be such as I had often imagined....

A long time already had the religious and racial hatred between the Armenians and the Tartars been inflamed to the uttermost. In the whole of the Caucasus there was a bubbling as if in a witch’s cauldron.... Naturally, I remained in Baku, in order to be ready for what I hoped would happen there.

The whole population was at the uttermost point of tension; everything seemed painfully uncertain; would the dance begin or not?... I felt that it would only be necessary to throw a grain of sand into machine, and in an instant it would lead to an avalanche.... I was possessed by a frightful excitement; this mental tension was intolerable.... From minute to minute the horrible anxiety of the undetermined increased in me, and the hellish desire still burned within me; I longed that it might start at this very minute, so that, at last, my nerve-destroying tension might be relieved.

Then I became possessed with a demoniacal idea: one only needed to give the slightest little push at the right place, and the storm would break.

Inwardly I shuddered at the idea of the horrible consequences; and yet something within me drove me forward with an irresistible force—finally, to close the switch, and to allow the current to pass which must give rise to the explosion.... “It is only a kind of benevolent midwifery,” something seemed to whisper in my ear. “It must happen, in any case!... The sooner the storm breaks, the better!”

Thus I was subjected to a conflict of perceptions, which made me quite irresponsible. I was hurled to and fro by momentary feelings like a football. A single word from the other side would have produced in me such a suggestion that I should have blindly done anything I might have been asked to do.

My state resembled that of those people of whom Blanqui says: “Paris at any moment contains 50,000 men who are ready at a wave of the hand to shed blood for any cause.” It is indifferent to them, he might have added, if it is for the cause of freedom or for the cause of reaction.

This “destroy-everything mood,” which had so long been to me a psychological riddle, I was now able to study in my own person, as the result of an intensified masochistic predisposition.... At the foundation of the whole hermaphroditic state, there lay nothing else than the love of humanity.... An everyday humanity offers us no new sensations.... We are only able to love when it is out of the ordinary.... For this reason, we strive to see mankind in pain and poverty—in order that we may love men more ardently; to love them for that reason, because their misery provides for us intense pain.

For days I wandered about, fighting within myself a frightful spiritual battle.... I felt that the only alternatives were either to bring about a catastrophe or suicide. To wait any longer was beyond my powers. A chance must decide....

A kind of trance state had taken possession of my organism.... I knew nothing rightly: I did not know if everything around me was reality or only a dream!... Yes, I even doubted my own existence!... At no moment did I know where I was, how I had come there, what I had just been doing, what I really was.... I remember only that suddenly I was walking in the street in deep conversation with a man entirely unknown to me.... Our conversation turned round the question, What was going to happen?... Both of us were reserved, both on the watch; each seemed to have the feeling—“He is seeing through me; I must not betray myself!... Perhaps I shall be able to get something out of him!”... Thus, we spoke with the most extreme caution about that which each of us read in the soul of the other....

The passers-by stared at us; possibly we had been speaking rather too loudly. It appeared to me that someone was following us in order to listen to our conversation; we stopped, in order that this person might be compelled to walk past us. It was an impudent lad, in the years between boyhood and manhood; he stopped also, with his hands in his trousers pockets, a few paces distant, and listened to us with interest.... My companion was as much taken aback as I was myself, and we both began to stammer. At the moment a crowd of gapers had collected around us, hoping to hear something of interest. We both became continually more confused; my head began to swim, and I began to say something. It must have been nonsense that I spoke, for my companion looked at me, half astonished and half alarmed, and several persons in the crowd began to titter. This made me suddenly lose my head more even than before, and I began to get angry. Suddenly I shouted out to my companion: “That will have the most frightful results; they have cut off the Tartar’s feet and hands, and now the Tartars will massacre the whole town!”... All those around me began to talk to one another at once. “Cut off feet and hands!”... I had turned the switch and the current had passed....

I do not know how I got home.... My landlady rushed to me with the news: “The Tartars are going to burn the town to ashes, and to murder all the Armenians. Some of them have had their feet and hands cut off; their noses have been slit, their eyes cut out; boiling oil has been poured into their ears.... The people are all running away, or barricading themselves in their houses!”

XIII.

I did not see the beginning of the drama, for immediately after my return home I fell into a death-like slumber, which lasted more than fifty hours. No one could have kept about after such a spiritual storm.... When I awoke, I was so weak that only with labour could I move a few paces; my whole body trembled unceasingly.... I had absolutely no other desire but for repose.... After I had somewhat recovered, I went to sleep again until the next morning.

Now I once more felt comparatively strong, although my arms and legs still trembled. My hostess—a German woman, long ago deserted in this town—gave me an account of the atrocities perpetrated by the Tartars. As I went out, the town seemed to be dead. In the streets there still lay numerous horrible, mutilated corpses; the shops were closed; here and there houses were demolished. As far as I could learn, in Tiflis the Tartars had done even worse.... Here in Baku they had fired the boring-wells of the Armenians; from these the fire had spread to the rest, so that the entire petroleum industry was ruined, and 10,000 men were out of work.

All this, however, made no impression on me. A frightful relaxation and apathy had taken possession of me; I felt neither pain, nor pleasure, nor sympathy. It was the reaction following the previous hypertension of the nerves.

I cared no longer to stay here, and I resolved to return to Kiew, and later to Warsaw or to Lodz.

XIV.

After a short stay in Rostow, on the Don, I reached Kiew, and was received by the group with much joy. They had believed that I had fallen in the massacre at Baku or Tiflis.

Our successes in Tiflis and Baku in the economic province, by means of the economic terror, were now utilized at every opportunity; they only regretted that, owing to the racial conflict, everything had been once more destroyed.

During my absence there had been many changes here. In Odessa, Kiew, Warsaw, Lodz, and Bialystok, successful “expropriations” had been effected. These “new tactics” had not only been strikingly successful in almost every case, but they had also attracted towards us the sympathies of those who had hitherto not taken in much earnest our influence upon the revolution.

These “expropriations” were carried out in various ways. For example, by one of our associates, who was an official in the postal service, we were kept informed when, anywhere in the neighbourhood of the town, the post-office coach was to pass an isolated place, carrying anything of considerable value. We then attacked it and plundered it.

Or we sent out spies to learn when, in any great person’s house, or in any bank, large sums of money would be on hand, and at what time the fewest employees would be there. Armed to the teeth, we crowded in, and demanded the surrender of the money, leaving in its place a receipt with the dreaded imprint of our organization. It also happened—as in Odessa—that a bomb was exploded in a business locality. Every one ran up to see what had happened. Meanwhile, one of our bands entered the place of business from behind and plundered the safe.

What a quantity of intelligence, energy, perseverance, and knowledge had to be employed, to render such enterprises possible! How we had to watch for weeks, to form plans and reject them; how our arrangements must be altered at the last moment, or the enterprise entirely abandoned! Of this every one and no one can form an idea for himself.

Here, at any rate, I do not propose to give a detailed description of these affairs, because my sketches do not aim at giving a description of the revolution, or of those who participated in it, but simply and solely to represent the motives of my own activity: Therefore I describe my own environment, only in so far as it is necessary to do so for the understanding of these motives.

These “expropriations” were, moreover, not an anarchist speciality, for they were also undertaken by the other terrorist parties.

He, however, who believes that the revolutionaries employed this money for their personal needs is grossly deceived. After, as before, they remained in their miserable holes, eating rotten herrings and going barefoot, in order not to destroy their union with the workmen, and not to lose the latter’s confidence. The money was used solely for revolutionary purposes—for providing weapons and printing-presses; for the erection of laboratories for making bombs; for the expenses of the journeys of smugglers and propagandists; for bribery; and for the support of those who had been arrested, and of their families—also the families of those who had been killed or wounded.

XV.

Soon after my return from Baku, I was transferred to Warsaw, in order to take part in the May-day celebrations of 1905—these May-day celebrations taking place according to the calendar of non-Russian countries.

The war, the unceasing extensive strikes and disturbances, had resulted everywhere in giving rise to horrible misery, which was further increased by the political crisis and by the arrest of all branches of industry.

All the misery of which I had always dreamed I now saw unceasingly around me. It might be believed that at length my desires would have obtained satisfaction! But this was not so. In the same degree as that with which the poverty around me increased did my sensibility, too, become blunted; I became accustomed to its appearance; I regarded it as an everyday occurrence, as something easily comprehensible.

Somewhat more did I love and honour humanity on account of this misery; but not to the extent of something beyond force, something “superhuman,” which would have been necessary for my complete satisfaction. Perhaps in Baku I should have experienced this superhuman feeling, had it not been that at the decisive moment my body gave way under the strain. Was that, perhaps, prearranged by Nature? Has Nature imposed these limits upon an individual, in order to prevent him from raising himself above the human standard?

Can it be that the state into which I fell at Baku resembled a “syncope of the soul,” which ensued when my psychical state began to verge upon the superhuman, in consequence of the torments around me, just as bodily syncope renders us unconscious when physical pain exceeds the limits of human capacity?

These questions now began to occupy me. I could only attain certainty by means of experiment; and I must obtain certainty, even if the half of humanity had to be sacrificed, as one sacrifices a rabbit in an experiment.

Impatiently I awaited the first of May.... Perhaps that day would bring me a solution of the riddle!... The workmen were still undecided: should they demonstrate or not?... I began to urge them in favour of the demonstration; my reason is easy to understand....

It was unquestionably one of the largest demonstrations that Warsaw had ever witnessed. In the narrow streets there was packed an innumerable crowd. Suddenly from all sides the soldiers charged the demonstration.... A frightful panic—such as I have never before seen—seized the crowd. Resistance was not to be thought of—it was a sauve qui peut!

In mad fear of death, every one began to scream, and to seek refuge in the houses.... At the doors of the houses there ensued a frightful pressure. Many were thrown to the ground; these were trodden to pulp. On the ground-floor the windows were broken in, and people crawled through them into the houses. Meanwhile, the Cossacks were raging up and down, cutting people down with their sabres. There were deafening screams of fear, and with these and with the groans of the wounded there mingled the bestial “Süiy” of the Cossacks, so as to produce a nerve-lacerating concert of hell. And around one could see the unnaturally dilated pupils, the widely opened eyes, and the faces distracted with anxiety, of those who were seeking safety in flight.

The same excitement had seized on me also; with a wildly beating heart, and an unbearably distressing feeling of contracture in the loins, which produced in my entire organism a kind of “anxious ecstasy,” I began to hope.... But it would not come....

XVI.

In Odessa, which was exhausted by unceasing fights and strikes, the strength of the reaction began to make itself felt, and there were fears of a “pogrom” (an attack on the Jews). The forces of the reaction in these pogroms always made use of the Lumpenproletariat (the blackguardly element of the mob).

Since the most trustworthy of our Odessa associates were Jews, and thus had no influence with the Lumpenproletariat, they urged me to go to Odessa, and, as a non-Hebrew, to use my influence to prevent the pogrom. It was not possible for me to refuse, although in secret I rejoiced at the prospect of the pogrom.

In Kiew, where I had some business, I met by chance an acquaintance belonging to my more prosperous past. This man knew nothing of my revolutionary activities. He, for his part, was an arch anti-Semite. In consequence of the disturbances, his business had been completely ruined. He described the whole revolution as the work of the Jews, and also abused the Government, which, in his opinion, was to blame for the weakness which it exhibited in dealing with the revolutionary forces.

“But,” he continued, with a wink, “if the Government does nothing, we shall know how to help ourselves a little!” I pretended to be entirely of his opinion, and he told me in confidence that there already existed in Odessa a secret committee, which was to take the matter in hand. He also was a member. A large sum of money had already been collected, in order to pay certain persons who were to arrange the entire “Hetze.” If I wished, I could be his guest, and he would make me a member of the committee. I agreed.

The next day I was actually enrolled in the committee. Who the members really were I did not learn. One characteristic was common to them all—a frightful indolence.... Everything was ready. They would arrange for patriotic demonstrations, and would then throw proclamations amongst the people, to tell them that the Jews had sworn an oath to combine with the Japanese for the destruction of Holy Russia; that the revolution had been begun by the Jews in order that the Little Father’s army must meet enemies on both sides at once. Thus, for all the present misery the Jews only were to blame, etc.... Everything had been arranged already, and was in the hands of people who were prepared to undertake the whole affair. The only thing now wanting was the proclamation.

My acquaintances now began to praise my genius as an author, and they all pressed me to begin immediately to compose the required leaflet. The proposal suited me; I do not need to say why. With zeal I threw myself upon the task, and the proclamation was a masterpiece of demagogic art, and a crowning example of the “appeal to the beast in man,” as it is ordinarily called.

The diffusion of this “document of civilization,” as it is called by the revolutionists, took place in connexion with the planned demonstration. The day passed without an outbreak, although the imminence of the storm could, as one may say, be felt in the air. Not until the evening were a few Jews beaten here and there.

On the second day our people arranged for a second demonstration. From the other side they endeavoured to form a counter-demonstration, and the two came in conflict. The Black Hundreds (drawn from the Lumpenproletariat), who fought in the name of “patriotism,” dispersed the counter-demonstrators, and began to demolish and to plunder in the Jewish quarter of the town.

The breaking of the panes of glass, and the destruction of the goods in the shop-windows and of the furniture in the houses, seemed to inflame the crowd more and more; they must have experienced a sort of voluptuous sensation in connexion with these activities. Finally, they found some Jews who had hidden themselves. A horrible yell was now raised. The Jews were dragged out into the street; they were struck with everything available—with cudgels, hatchets, and knives—until they were completely unrecognizable. The crowd found more and more of them. Most of them threw themselves on their knees and begged for life; it was most horrible to see them, beaten till their features were no longer distinguishable, still pleading for mercy. Now the mob really began to smell blood, and to display its whole true human nature. Each began to murder according to his own individual fancy. Here a man cut the breast from a nursing mother; there they tore the clothes from some girls, and flogged them naked through the streets. In another place they dragged a Jewess, naked, from her house into the street, tied her hand and foot, and fastened her by the hair to the axle of a cab; then they drove off at a gallop until she was battered to death. Behind the cab there ran street-arabs, striking at her body.... But to what purpose is it to describe these scenes, at which one’s heart is convulsed in one’s body with sorrow, and simultaneously one wishes to exult with joy and triumph?

Here I saw once more, in their proper environment, the 50,000 of whom Blanqui speaks. A wave of the hand would have sufficed—although 99 per cent, of them unquestionably felt no hostility towards the Jews—to produce in all of them the most infernal anti-Semitic excesses. If the police would allow it, as they allow the pogrom, another wave of the hand would direct the mob with no less ease to make an attack on another human variety—for example, on the capitalists.

What psychological factor drove them on?... Was it simply a tendency to cruelty?... No!... A love of cruelty considered by itself, without a nobler motive, is inhuman, inharmonious to human nature, and man cannot escape his own nature. There must therefore be other motives at the basis of such actions, motives of a nature more humanly comprehensible.

But look at all those slaughterers! Regard their physiognomy! Not a trace of cruelty—only suffering, unheard-of suffering, is reflected on these faces!... The fear of death and the pain of their victims prepares for themselves incredible torment!... Do you not believe that these people will return to their houses, and will suffer intense mental pain?... They will continually see, in imagination, the last beseeching glance of their victim, full of complaint and reproach, directed upon them!... What hatred, what contempt, will they feel for the animal which has awakened within them! They will feel a longing to spit in their own faces, to strike themselves, to strangle themselves!... Before every one whom they meet they will lower their eyes: “He knows that I have murdered people, amid the most cruel tortures, against whom there was no hatred in my heart—murdered only for this reason: because I had within me the instinctive demand for spiritual torment; because by the situation in which I suddenly found myself one pole of my hermaphrodite nature was suddenly discharged!”

“They are masochists, only they do not know it.”

Self-contempt suddenly seized me amidst this Satanic orgy of suffering on the part of such unconscious, instinctive masochists. The remembrance that all these persons were being led onwards by a blind animal impulse, and that to-morrow they would fall on their knees before their God and pray to Him for pardon, filled me with disgust. I began to hate this stupid mass. I wanted to see them grovel in the dust themselves, and howl for mercy.

For this purpose it was only necessary to organize the Selbstschutz (a union for the prevention of persecution of the Jews). In order to effect this, I tried to get into the Jewish quarter. I succeeded in doing so by means of some side passages. Hardly had I reached this quarter, when I came across masses of these “Self-Protectors.” Finally, I found among them some acquaintances, and I joined them.

A heated contest now began to rage.... As the Black Hundreds were now so energetically attacked, all their heroism was speedily at an end: they took to flight. At this moment the soldiers appeared—not, as one might have imagined, to attack the Black Hundreds, but to attack the “Self-Protectors.”

My arm, which was stretched out in front of me, was traversed longitudinally by a rifle-bullet in a peculiar manner. I sank to the ground at first, but soon recovered sufficiently to get up and run away.

That inexpressible sense of complete satisfaction by means of suffering, for which I was continually searching—which, so to say, I felt to slumber within me—once more appeared in actual experience. I always had the impression that there was something wanting, that it was necessary to awaken something within me which hitherto had existed in my consciousness only in a dormant state.... At the same time, a voice whispered to me that I was demanding something superhuman; that the attainment of such a thing must logically overwhelm my purely human powers, and that it would involve my annihilation.

Day and night these thoughts tormented me: “You must gain this experience—even if it involves your destruction!... But what if, at the last moment—as at Baku—a further incapacity, a ‘spiritual syncope,’ ensues?”

One thing I knew—“When you reach it, it will only be by yourself; all others will break to pieces before you!”

XVII.

I no longer had any interest in the development of revolutionary affairs, since for my own purposes they were no longer serviceable.

The new questions which now arose—as, for example, the propaganda among the Lumpenproletariat—left me cold.... In the pogrom we had seen what an unawakened force—reputed as revolutionary, but in reality masochistic—was slumbering in the Lumpenproletariat. That this force could also be used in the service of reaction was ascribed to the fact that all these thieves, criminals, and prostitutes, came into contact only with the working classes. But since they earn from the latter nothing but contempt, their sensibility was turned against the working classes.

This unfortunate state of affairs it was proposed to counteract by going among the criminals, just as in earlier years they had gone among the working people. An endeavour was made to organize the Lumpenproletariat, in order to win their sympathies.

The movement was in part successful, although it brought with it much corruption. Thus it happened that the criminals endeavoured to turn the matter to their own advantage, and began to pursue their profession in the name of anarchism. For example, in Warsaw they visited the house of an enormously rich Jewish banker, whose father had recently died, and, under the mask of anarchism, demanded from him 10,000 roubles, with the threat that if he did not give the money, they would dig up the corpse of his father and bury it in unconsecrated ground. When we remember there is nothing more horrible for an orthodox Jew than to rest in unconsecrated soil, we shall understand that the banker gave the money; but this occurrence aroused a great sensation, and people began to identify anarchists with common criminals.

Now the anarchists had to endure the persecution, not only of the Government, but also that of other revolutionary parties and of the Lumpenproletariat—the latter for this reason: because they did not wish their names to be associated with actions which were undertaken for personal advantage, and not for revolutionary aims.

This campaign against the anarchists from three different sides must soon bring about disaster.

During this time I was perpetually puzzling over the problem: “Will the idea you have dreamed of be realized within you?... Will it lead to your destruction?... Or will it overwhelm your powers, and lead once more to spiritual syncope?”

By means of an experiment, the matter could be determined!... Supposing one were to distribute broadcast plague bacilli!... If entire towns were to suffer from this disease!... If the fear of death was to seize the whole crowd of those who, in their cowardice at every strike, every demonstration, every fight at the barricades, had hidden behind the stove or crept under the bed!... If this fear of death were to increase to a general panic, affecting entire towns, entire countries, as happened in the middle ages!... If the people, in their despair, should look for the disseminators of the trouble, and should proceed to hew one another to pieces!... Would my relief come then?... Will there be an answer for me?

I shudder to think of the suffering which this would entail for me! I feel that I am not equal to this!... I suffer, on the other hand, inexpressibly, because I have no answer, no recognition, no satisfaction!... I will—and I cannot. To endure longer this hermaphroditic state—this is death or lunacy!... What to do?... How to free oneself from this horrible dilemma?

Oh, why am I not like others?... Why cannot I simply accept that which is?... Why do I torment myself to climb the mountain, in order to stand before a bottomless abyss?... Before an abyss whose secret depths will be manifest to me only if I hurl myself into it!...

What to do?... What to do?... Shall I, or shall I not?... I will!... I must!...

As I was about to do it, I was arrested! Chance or foresight?

Oh, fate, fate! That is too much of suffering!... Oh, mankind, mankind, what have you done?... A single one wished to see. A single one wished to tear a veil from the image—and you have hindered it!... Eternally you will have darkness around you!... But why will you not allow me to see the light?

Is it thus that you thank me, who have loved humanity as no other has loved!

Yes; that is once over again the cruel, the pitiless philosophy of Golgotha—

“He who will love—must suffer!”